Department of Education

Introduction to the
Philosophy of the
Human Person
Human Persons as Oriented Towards their
Impending Death
Second Quarter - Week 7

Stephen M. Bueno
Writer Annie D.
Pesito Validator
Mariel Eugene L. Luna
Editor and Layout

Schools Division Office – Muntinlupa City

Student Center for Life Skills Bldg., Centennial Ave., Brgy. Tunasan, Muntinlupa City
(02) 8805-9935 / (02) 8805-9940
This final module will be focusing on the understanding of the reality of the human person
which he/she cannot escape of. Death is fact of life in which all of us must face in
the near future. Our attitude towards our death is a significant indicator of how we
should live our life to the fullest. The reflection of death reminds us that life is
temporary and we should spend our days authentically. In death we can appreciate the
meaning of our existence. Let us begin with the lesson.

At the end of this module, you will be able to:

1. Identify the different definitions of death.

2. Enumerate the objectives he/she really wants to achieve and to define the projects
he/she really wants to do in his life.
3. Reflect on the meaning of his/her own life.

The Game of Death

This fun game asses your knowledge about dead things. In this game, you have to
guess the correct answers for the following. All of the answers have a word “death”
or “dead” or related to it as cue to their correct answers.

HINT ANSWER
Lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath,
1. envy, & pride
Another term for capital
2. punishment
7th book in a J. K. Rowling series
3.
National Park located in the Mojave
4. Desert
5. A salt lake between Israel and
Jordan
6. Common wedding vow phrase

7. The subtitle for the second Pirates

of the Caribbean movie

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 8. Traumatic event where one might
see a white light or have an out-of-
body moment
9. The body may be alive, but all
cerebral activity has stopped
10. In Star Wars, it obliterated the
planet Alderaan
11. Another name for the Bubonic
plague
12. Marvel Comics antihero, aka Wade
Wilson
13. Old Testament text found in the
cave of Israel
14 Zombie movies of 2004
15. 1989 Robin Williams film

In the previous module, we focus on the condition of the human person within society
or institution. Here we explore the nature of the individual as he/she immersed in a
community. How he was shaped by the institution he belongs to.
In this final module, we will focus on the human experience of death. Death is a
controversial issue in philosophy. In this topic we will explore some of the basic
issues of death. How do human experience death? How do human being think and
feel about death? and how Important is death in the understanding of what it meant
to be human?

Introduction
Death is a reluctant topic to think or to talk about. The only time we talk about it is
when a close relatives or friends have died, other than that occasions, we have suppressed
ourselves from talking about it. One reason probably that our notion of death
connotes suffering, sickness and accident that we never think that it will happen to
someone for the meantime. Another reason, death is personal experience that will
never be experienced by anyone. Our only experience of death comes from the
observation of a dying person perhaps from our relative or a close friend. We

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will never experience our own death. However, understanding death and dying
process assist us to cope with an event that is unavoidable yet can be managed in
ways that prevent or alleviate pain and allow the development of strategies for coping
suffering.

General Characteristics of Death

Cessation of life is a natural tendency among living organism. But among these it is
the human being that can alter this natural process. Human death is quite distinct
because we have learned how to either terminate or prolonged the cycle life. Human death
is commonly understood whether in any multidimensional perspectives by its general
features. Mark Berkson (2016) writes their common characteristics:

1. Universality: all living things die.

2. Irreversibility: a dead person cannot come back to life.
3. Nonfunctionality: death brings about the end of all life functions, of all physical
and mental activity.
4. Causality: death is brought about either by internal, biological issues (such as
organ failure) or external causes (such as trauma).
5. Existential: Each person understands, “I am going to die.”

Personifying Death
Another way of thinking about death is to consider the images and metaphor we used
to describe death. Ancient civilization had different ways of picturing death and the
tread runs over across cultures. For instance:
▪ In ancient Greece, death was presented by Thanatos, son of night and
darkness, and twin brother of the god of sleep, Hypnos.
▪ Hesiod described Thanatos as “pitiless”. In the later period, Thanatos was seen
not pitiless, but as one who can help someone leave this world peacefully.
▪ Angel of death is found in Hebrew, Christianity and Islam. In Hinduism, Yama
(lord of death);
▪ La Santa Muerte, in Mexico, a saint portrayed as a feminine skeleton who can
provide protection to her devotees and also can give them safe passage to the
afterworld.
▪ A hooded figure in black cloak, often with skeletal body and generally carrying
a scythe. (i.e., Black Death)

Defining Death
What is death actually? Giving the exact definition of death is quite troublesome. A
straight forward answer seems difficult to achieve. The question involves a different
level of answers. It can be answered in the level of biological perspective, religious,
philosophical, cultural, legal and even in a political point of view.

Table 1 shows the different definitions of death based on religious and

biological perspectives.

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 Table 1. Four Definitions of Death

Religious Definition: Whole brain death when the

Death is a departure of brain is dead. The person is
the soul from the body dead, even if the heart and
lungs can be kept functioning.

Neocortical death:
A cardiopulmonary In the brain, the neocortex is the
definition that considers seat of many elements we identify
death as occurring when the with our sense of self
heart and lungs cease to (consciousness, awareness, sense
function. perception, language, memory
and thought). If this part of the
brain dies, one will no longer be
an experiencing subject.

Existential Definition of Death

An existential definition of death is one approach in philosophy where we can
have a reflective understanding of the meaning of death. Let me introduce you to
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). He was German philosopher and one of the important
thinker of twentieth century in philosophy. His major important work, Being in Time
(1927), here are some highlights of his thought about death.

▪ Man is being-towards-death
▪ As long as man exists in the world, his potentiality for being is never
exhausted. According to Heidegger, man, as long as he IS, has never reached
his “wholeness.
▪ Man reaches his wholeness in death. In death, man loses his potentiality for
being, he loses his “there”. There is no more outstanding in man, everything
is finished, settled for him. He is no longer being there.
▪ Death is the transition of man from Dasein (being there) to no-longer Dasein,
there is therefore the impossibility of experiencing the transition/death.
▪ Our experience of death is the death of others. We see, hear, people die.
▪ The death of the other person, Heidegger argues, makes him no longer a
person but a thing, a corpse.
▪ We never experience the death of others. What we see is the suffering, sickness
and the lifeless body.
▪ No one can take the other’s dying away from him. Death is always mine.

Heidegger also points out that are two possibilities of being death in human:
inauthentic death and authentic death. This distinction is shown in Table 2.

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 Table 2. Authentic and Inauthentic Death

Authentic Death Inauthentic Death

- His awareness of death is not evasion, of
covering up death’s true implications, nor giving - The “they” (i.e., crowd, public,
new explanations for it. institution, tradition) hide death
by saying by saying, “People die
- Man’s must face the possibility of death as his … one of these days one will die
possibility, the possibility in which his very too, in the end; but right now it
existence is an issue. has nothing to do with us”.

- The authentic attitude being-towards-death is - The “they” says, “one dies”,

anticipation of this possibility. By anticipation man but the one is nobody, no one will
come close to death, not by making it actual but claim that it is mine or my death.
by understanding it as the possibility of
impossibility of any new existence at all for him. - In this way, the ‘they’ levels
off death, makes it ambiguous
- Anticipation reveals to man that death means and hides the true aspects of
the measureless impossibility of existence. This this possibility, the mineness,
projection of his outmost possibility will provide non-relational, and that which
him with a vision of his own present existence. cannot be outstripped.

- Man realizes that death is his own outmost

possibility, and thus awareness comes to him of
his potentiality for being, for fulfilling himself,
his own being. He must therefore wrench himself
away from the impersonal ‘they’ and make
himself an individual, alone.

Social Dimension of Grief

The social dimension of grief is mourning. As for this impossible desire to regain the
lost life, it seems to me that it has a very real and practical manifestation, which has
to do with the mourning ritual.
Mourning rituals, in our society, are incredibly impoverished. We do not really give
much attention to death or grief or their meaning. In other societies, grief continues
for a long time, which seems much more realistic. In fact, in some societies, grief
goes on for a lifetime. The person who experiences grief never gets over it and is never
expected to get over it.

We do not think of someone who is lost as just plain lost. We loved this person, and
we still love this person. In fact, I would suggest that grief is the continuation of love.

It is a natural tendency for us to commemorate our dead loved ones. It is a means of

extending and keeping our love ones alive. It is not only of personal but also social.
This commemorative impulse may affect the whole society. It is so when we commemorate
important individual who made some important contribution to society. We celebrate
heroes, saints, and even our departed loved ones. In this way, the love ones will always
be remembered and stays with us.

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Kasher (2007) gives us the benefits of grieving.
▪ to provide the means to which the individual and the community can come to
terms in stoppage and the resulting absence occasional by the event of the
particular death.

▪ to provide an opportunity for the individual and the community to remember

previous deaths and the resulting stoppage or absences.

▪ to provide an opportunity for the individual and the community to affirm that
in spite of these absences are still a community.

▪ to alert the individual that this is his/her fate; and to offer the individual the
reassurance that the community with remember and will go on.

Although death is a sure possibility but not yet, death can teach us tells us more
about the beauty of life and how to live a good life. According to Kasher, when a
beloved died, some of the lessons we can gain from that experience are:

▪ how to surrender
▪ how to lose
▪ how to keep living with loss, in spite of loss
▪ how to make new attachments and forms of attachment
▪ how to measure values worth

Language of Death

Direction: Match the correct definition under the given term. Draw a line to match
column A to Column B.

Column A Column B
1 absence of vital signs Euthanasia

2 skin paleness post mortem dying

Deliberate causing of death for

3 patient with incurable disease algor mortis
Cessation of vital signs and
4 brain activity as declared by thanatology
physician
5 the cessation of life pallor mortis
6 death attributed resulting in decomposition
cell death
the stiffening of the skeletal
7 muscles after death embalming
8 Scientific study of death biological death
9 the cooling of body after death legal death

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 10 death rate rigor mortis
11 Process of getting dead clinical death
the pooling of the blood in
12 tissues after death resulting in death
reddish color to the skin
13 preservation of the corpse livor mortis
14 after death mortality
15 reduction into simpler forms post mortem
post mortem

Direction. Show what you have learned by answering the following questions below:
A. Check your Knowledge
Using your own words define:
1. Death
2. Grief
3. being-towards-death
4. authentic death
5. inauthentic death
B. Check your Understanding
1. Estimate one definition of death that would be most helpful in the description of
your belief? Why?
2. Describe how would you face an authentic death?

3. What is the best way of showing sympathy for a friend who has recently lost a
loved one?

Writing Reflection Paper

This is the last reflection paper that you will write in this course. This time you will
be writing on the topic death. Although it sounds morbid, well that’s how things
work in this world, everything must come to an end. To help to get some ideas in
writing your reflection paper, I want you to look back to your previous experiences

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when you have lost someone you loved it can be a family member, a relative, a friend
or a pet. These backgrounds will get you started in writing your reflection.
As always, follow the suggested writing guidelines to help you in this writing task.
Afterwards, your reflection paper will be graded accordingly. Don’t forget to check
the rubric for this activity, so that you might have an idea how your paper is graded
in this task.
Goodluck!

Directions: Choose the best answer. Write your answer on a separate piece of paper.

*** To be administered by the subject teacher in class.

References
Books
Asa Kasher. Ed. Dying and Death: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. New York:
Rodopi, 2007.
Berkson, Mark. Death, dying and the afterlife: Lessons from World Culture.
Virginia: The Great Course, 2016.
Dy, Manuel. Philosophy of Man: Selected Readings. Manila: Goodwill Trading
Company Inc., 1986.
Solomon, Robert. True to our Feelings: What Our Emotions Are Really Telling
Us. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2007.

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